Skip to main content
Main

Hamburg Pickle

A pickled beef preserved in a brine of boiled water, salt, sugar, saltpetre, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,806 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Hamburg Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brine

  1. Mix boiled water with common salt, moist sugar, saltpetre, and vinegar.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 20 minutes and skim carefully.

  3. Let the brine cool, then submerge the beef in it.

Cure and keep

  1. Turn the beef every day for three weeks until ready for smoking.

  2. To preserve, boil the pickle occasionally with more salt, saltpetre, and sugar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Vinegar + beeftop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,895 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + beeftop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Common salt
Draws water out of the beef and seasons it, helping preserve the meat.
Saltpetre
Helps the beef keep its pink colour and inhibits spoilage during curing.
Moist sugar
Balances the salt and adds mild sweetness while feeding the curing flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the pickle.

The step that matters

Turn the beef every day. Brine penetrates unevenly, so regular turning keeps every part of the beef in contact with the liquid and cures it evenly over the three weeks.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes